Josh Viney — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:50:12 GMT

Great articles!

As someone who has made the transition, I definitely think you touched on some extremely important points.

I found that my experience as a project manager and as a UX practitioner were invaluable to me when it came to transitioning to the product manager role. Project management taught me how to understand the importance of the team, while working in UX taught me how to understand my customers. Product managers must strive to know their teams, their customers, and their products inside and out to the best of their ability. Without good insight into these three factors, the decision making process gets really scary.

The piece of the puzzle that was most difficult for me during the transition was learning how to prioritize. It can be a very difficult shift in mindset from searching for the ideal UX to having to make a practical decision based on business needs. It’s interesting to note that the prettiest designs and the clearest UX don’t always make for the best converting/selling products, and that fact alone can be hard for some to deal with.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Josh Viney